


Sticks and Stones

by melo



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Childhood Friends, F/M, M/M, Pining, Unrequited Love, Wisdom Teeth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-03
Updated: 2013-11-03
Packaged: 2017-12-31 09:56:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1030322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melo/pseuds/melo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel is doomed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sticks and Stones

Castiel knows the exact moment that he fell in love with Dean Winchester.

He knows the exact moment he fell in love with Dean Winchester and it wasn’t when they first met on the playground in second grade with Dean pushing Castiel rudely down the slide before he was ready to go himself. It wasn’t two years later at summer camp when they’d been on opposite sides in Tug-of-War and Dean’s team had literally dragged Castiel’s team through the mud, and it wasn’t later that night when Dean had roasted marshmallows for Castiel to make up for his skinned knees. Nor was it the time Dean put Dan Cooper in a cast after pushing him out of a tree for calling Castiel by some horribly offensive names. It wasn’t even the first year of junior high when Dean had walked an upset Castiel home, telling him that Castiel’s project documenting the development of bread mould – with a live specimen – had been a way cooler science fair project than Nicole Turner’s first place potato battery.

No, it wasn’t any of those times, though Castiel suspects that all those moments built the foundation, laid brick by innocuous brick, until the first day of spring break their sophomore year when Castiel had gone to visit the Winchester residence and was greeted with the vision of Dean in the open doorway, cheeks swollen and bruised and lips looking painfully chapped.

“Wha’s de sekret paa’word?” Dean had slurred, barring Castiel’s entrance to his modest abode until he was presented with a large tub of mint chocolate chip ice cream – Dean’s favourite.

Dean’s grin had been gleeful and squirrelly, looking like he’d somehow already stuffed his face with the contents of the unopened tub, though Castiel knew for a fact that his mouth was simply inflamed from having his wisdom teeth removed.

“Knew I cou’ coun’ on ya,” Dean had clapped Castiel on the shoulder and guided him inside, his calloused thumb just brushing the skin of Castiel’s neck. “Seems you’re de on’y un I  _can_  coun’ on. I said a  _Go’zilla_  ma’athon, bu’ Sam’s a bitch an’ he rented de  _remake_  o’  _Go’zilla_.”

It was then – Dean’s hand warm on his shoulder, words made almost unintelligible by his temporary lisp and face a chubby model of what he should, by all rights, look like considering the amount of unhealthy food he regularly ingested – that Castiel realized that that tightening heat in his chest wasn’t the beginning of an asthma attack.

To this day, he doesn’t know what triggered the realization because Dean certainly hadn’t made an attractive picture with a face that looked like it had gone a few rounds with a door knob and lost, but somehow Castiel saw that his world had become a city built around Dean, with every conscious and stray thought tied back to his neighbour, his friend, his apparent object of infatuation.

He was in love with Dean Winchester.

Perhaps it is incorrect to say that that was the moment he fell in love with Dean Winchester. It might be more fitting to say that that was the moment a switch was flipped and he was enlightened to the true cause of his erratic pulse and short breaths, his clammy palms and upset stomach. In that instant, the city of his mind lit up as he silently admitted to himself that maybe his feelings weren’t so platonic after all – and maybe they hadn’t been for years. Maybe he had never reached the bottom of the slide after that first rough push from Dean’s grubby little hands and he was actually still falling, falling, falling. Regardless, in the same instant he accepted that new facet of his emotions, a beast of doubt and fear rose up inside him, in sync with the giant mutant lizard that appeared on the television screen in Dean’s den.

Even then at sixteen years of age, Castiel knew he was doomed. Inside he already felt the beginnings of his destruction, like a monument simultaneously being erected and destroyed. And as Castiel watched Dean plop down on the worn sofa in the den, one arm wrapping around his girlfriend’s shoulders and the other patting out an empty space for Castiel to sit next to him, Castiel wondered how he would survive.

Godzilla could die at the end of the movie, but he always came back, if not in a sequel, then in a remake. Castiel was not equipped to deal with mutant lizards in his heart; not green eyed monsters, and especially not too-gorgeous-for-their-own-good boys who smiled such bright smiles, like Dean had been waiting for Castiel’s arrival to make his day complete.

Sitting there, thigh to thigh with Dean Winchester – Dean Winchester and  _girlfriend_ – Castiel thought he might really need his inhaler after all, and began groping blindly for it with one eye on the television and the other fixed dizzyingly on the delicate bloom of purple bruises at the corner of Dean’s jaw. Castiel almost upended the Coke that someone had shoved in his hand at some point, but instead he only jostled it enough for the straw to stab him in the nostril.  
  
And of course. Dean knew that Castiel had a penchant for drinking pop through a straw. Of course.

They were best friends. It was only natural for Dean to know Castiel’s habits, just as Castiel knew Dean’s favourite ice cream, and favourite colour, and favourite music, and favourite laundry detergent, and the way he liked to ball his clean socks up instead of folding them, and the way Dean's hairline wasn't a straight line on the back of his neck, but rather a zigzag like the beat of a pulse on a heart monitor. Even so, Castiel couldn’t help but shrivel a little inside his skin as Lisa leaned into Dean’s side and whispered something into his ear, earning a short chuckle and a lazy grin.

Dean knew Castiel very well and that was dangerous, Castiel saw, because Castiel could only keep a secret from Dean for so long, and given a choice between having Dean as a friend or having Dean not at all, there was no competition. They were best friends, Castiel reminded himself, drawing his knees together so he wouldn’t have to feel the line of heat that was Dean’s thigh.

Castiel sunk back into the lumpy cushions of the sofa, tilting his head back to watch the blurred figure of Godzilla tromp around Tokyo through his lashes, eyes opened to slits so he wouldn’t have to see how perfectly Lisa’s head fit resting on Dean’s shoulder.

 _Best friends, best friends, best friends_ , and never before had Castiel thought two words might break his bones.


End file.
